Background and Data

The website is based on the UN IRP Global Material Flows Database. Data and visualisations cover more than 200 countries, the time period of 1970 to 2017, and more than 300 different materials aggregated into 13 categories of material flows.

Collaborators

The FINEPRINT project develops a new method for assessing global material flows using high geographical resolution and relating global supply chains with their associated environmental and social impacts.

MATERIALFLOWS.NET in practice

Data on national and global material flows are gaining relevance for informing strategies and campaigns of different stakeholders.

In 2016, an expert team publishes an assessment report for the UN Environment International Resource Panel called "Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity". For the report a MFA dataset is used which had been compiled to large extent on the basis of the data underlying materialflows.net.

United Nations

The study “The Global Resource Footprint of Nations (2014)”, produced as part of the European FP7 research project CREEA, uses data from materialflows.net to calculate material footprints for various countries and regions around the world.

Data from materialflows.net are used for the analyses of international interconnections of Germany in the world.

Policy makers

As a collaboration with the international Friends of the Earth network campaigns on sustainable resource use and supply chain management are supported by analyses building on global material flow data from materialflows.net.

NGOs

Test your knowledge in our Quiz

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